Lost
is an ambient audio-visual installation, mapping the activity of a transient
community of unwitting performers, who are participating in peer-to-peer
file-sharing.
At this moment; music, video, images and software are being freely traded
in a community of networked peers. This network has no no centre; it is an
ephemeral cloud, a pool of pop consciousness.
List attempts to touch the surface of this pool, and obtain a sense of what it's like in
this abstract place?

Posing
as a member of the network, this installation betrays its peers and
submits for public scrutiny the flow of live queries from throughout
the global network. These queries form a base, often almost
pornographic, revealing essay of popular desire.

The
installation employs two modes of presentation to depict this flow of
desire; a simple visual display shows a sampling of the torrent of
queries and provides the audience with a introduction to the audio
presentation. This display is more complex multi-dimension rendering:
A spatialized storm of sharp and subdued bursts of sound immerses the
listener in a field of sound corresponding to every arriving query. A
blurred voice chants out queries letter by letter, reflecting the
fractured network data. Ever present is the deep hum of the network
connection, which at times falters if our node looses its connection
to another peer. When the rate of porn requests peaks the soundscape
model is broken introducing a more musical layer of rhythmic
sinister breath.

Lost was completed in the December 2003 in partial fulfilment of the
requirements of the Computing Arts and Design Science (CADS)
department's Masters of Applied Science Program at Simon Fraser
University. Lost has been presented to students and staff in the CADS Interactivity Lab.

Installation Requirements

This
project is implemented as a live custom software and commodity
hardware system. The artist will need to be on site to perform the
installation. Once installed Lost will run continuously without
attendance. The artist will require a high-speed internet connection,
LCD projector, screen and 4 powered speakers. The artist will supply
the remaining software and hardware.